1,038 Columbus Sellers Just Cut Their Price

The Sell for 1 Percent team breaks down the late October 2026 Columbus real estate market. Thanks to a dip in the 10-year Treasury from over 5.3% to under 5%, mortgage rates have seen a slight revival, pulling back from near 8% to the mid-7s. This investor “flight to safety,” spurred by a “tech wreck,” is creating a small window of opportunity for motivated buyers. For Columbus-area sellers, patience is key; while 709 homes went into contract last week, the median days on market is approaching 50, and over 1,000 sellers recently reduced their prices.

#SellFor1Percent #ColumbusRealEstate #ColumbusOhio #OhioRealEstate #ColumbusOH #FranklinCounty #RealEstate #RealEstateAgent #HomeSellingTips #HomeBuyingTips #RealEstateMarket #HousingMarket #MortgageRates #InterestRates

Full Transcript

Hey there, everyone. Jaime with Self for 1 Percent Realtors joined, as usual, by the gang. Head broker, Dave Barlow.

The agent on the streets, Jaysen Barlow, currently on… What’s the road you’re on? I’m on Coonpath Road. Coonpath.

All right. That’s good. Everybody from Lancaster knows Coonpath Road.

Yes, sir. Passing houses I used to visit. Long time ago.

We also are joined by Rich Cercone at Highlands Mortgage. It is October 23rd, 2026. Giving you guys a market update on mortgage interest rates in the greater Central Ohio real estate market.

And I don’t know if I read a recent jobs report revision or what I was reading, but what are you seeing out there, Rich? Well, let’s all drink to the tech wreck. All right. Yeah.

Is it bringing down interest rates? It’s bringing down interest rates. So, cheers. I guess I shouldn’t use a green..

I love economic destruction. I’m just such a big fan… Yes.

…of the economy crashes. The 10-year treasury earlier this month was definitely over 530, pushing towards 540. And that is people who watch this know the 10-year treasury is kind of the baseline for mortgage interest rates.

Currently, I haven’t looked in the last hour or so, but the last time I looked, we were under five. We’re at like 4.98, 4.99 on the 10-year. Oh, but they have a point.

Yeah. Correspondingly, we’ve seen rates come down into the… Into the threes? …seven and a half, maybe a little less in seven and a half range, where a little while ago, I think it was last week, we were talking about pushing towards eight.

Yes, you were. So, we are seeing a revival of interest rates on the back of the tech wreck. And everybody knows what their 401k, if you’re investing into gross stocks, is doing right now with the downturn in the NASDAQ.

So, what it is, is a traditional flight to safety. What that means is that when the traders get nervous about the stock market and about the NASDAQ and about the tech stocks, and they say, we just want to go park our money somewhere where we know it’s going to be safe. And the safest place they know is the United States Treasury bills.

And so, the money has gone into treasuries and out of stocks, and consequently, has lowered the mortgage rates a little bit. Again, mid-sevens, you still could be over seven. If you’ve got the wrong scenario, you could be as low as seven and a quarter with a first-time home buyer, right scenario kind of thing, possibly.

Hey, there’s life in the industry. Yeah, yeah. We’ll all go out and have steak dinner tonight.

Who can afford steak? Have you seen these gas prices? Your Aunt Paula, who lives up in Cleveland, said that she is seeing people post on Facebook asking for help to buy gas, that the prices are so out of control. Yeah. I mean, and I don’t disagree.

I guess if we had not got our $0.38-and-a-half cent reprieve, gas prices would be close to five bucks, right? I mean- Yeah, he’s off the road. Don’t get off my roads. You’re out there on Coon Path, and you’re cutting in and out, so the cell phone coverage out there is not very good.

But the good news is interest rates are coming down. So buy yourself a nice home, park your house in the garage, and don’t go anywhere. Watch Netflix.

Park your house in the garage? Is that what you- Is that what I said? Yeah. Park your car in your garage. There you go.

It’s all good stuff. So, Jada Bomb, is he stuck on you guys’ list? Oh, there he is. You’re going to have to stick your leg out your car door or something to get a better signal.

Jaime, what are you seeing out there on the real estate side, as far as your sellers and the buyers that you’re working with? A little bit of increase in activity, a little bit of a bump. Some of the listings that I’ve been struggling for a little bit of activity, I’ve seen a little bit more on the south side. So that’s a positive.

I have some agents with murmurs of sending offers, so we’ll see what happens there. And I’d say kind of the same story on the buy side. Some people coming out of the woodworks want to see a house for the first time in a little while, so go and show them.

So, not a total floodgate release, but I think the weather is nice enough. People are wanting to go see houses in the sunshine, so that’s good news. And hopefully after these elections, we’ll see a big pop.

Yeah. Well, Jay was talking a little bit yesterday or the day before that he went from a scary low of just a couple of houses in contract to having, what’d you say, 12 in contract right now? Excuse me, I’m up to like 14 or 15. I have no idea.

The man does so much business, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. But the good news is- I’ve lost count. I’m selling so many.

Well, like I said, that’s a good note. Oh, yeah. That you’re seeing this stuff.

So, that’s what we want to see. I am seeing a little bit more activity now. We’re heading into the last couple weekends of the month, and next weekend being the last weekend of the month, we typically do see an increase just because as the month moves along, buyers want to be in a new house now before Thanksgiving.

So, we’re four weeks away, right? And then you got another four weeks for Christmas. Can you guys hear me? So, I think that it’s a tale of two markets. I mean, a bunch of these are popping and selling, but Columbus right now, we’re still selling about 400 a week, which is half of what we are selling.

So, for the sellers out there that are slow, I mean, I wouldn’t be freaking out. You got to kind of let it come to you a little bit. The average days on market is up closer to 50 right now.

The median days on market, I’m sorry, is closer to 50. The average is up around 70. I mean, people are cutting price.

There is some pandemonium that’s going on. But I mean, good news is what you guys are talking about is that things are selling. The world is not ending.

There’s going to be a bunch of houses that do sell. So, you want to position yourself as best you can in your photos, your marketing. You really got to think about who are you marketing to.

Write your ad copy to those people and make sure you stay on top of the pile. One of the things I’m seeing is a bunch of listings that are coming on the market. I don’t know what the numbers are, but for me personally, I’m listing more right now than I did in the last month or two.

So, it’s like I would assume those numbers are picking up for everybody. Maybe it’s like the contracts and we’re just outperforming most of the market. But yeah, the market is not bad.

But if you’re one of our sellers or a seller that’s out there watching this and you’re not getting a bunch of action, don’t panic. It will pop. You’ll be good.

Just get positioned right. Yeah, I was just trying to take a quick look there, Jay, for the numbers. We, in the last week, listed 962 new listings.

And taking a quick look here, real quick at the number of properties we put in the contract, 709 properties are currently in the contract. And so- Early or that was in the last week? In the last week. So, that’s about 300 more than what we’ve been doing the last couple of weeks.

Yeah, I’ve been seeing around- We’ve been at 400, 477. Yeah, I’ve been seeing like 650. What are you tracking? Dad has a weird thing where he just tracks different numbers than everybody else in the world.

So, I’ll go with you. I’ll follow you to the ends of the year father, but- Why, thank you. Now, the interesting thing, we were down last week on price changes.

It was around 900 or so, I think it was. This week, it’s 1,038. In the last week, we had 1,038 people reduce the price on their home.

And so, again, this is just, I think, I personally think it’s the election has a lot of the deer in the with the election being done here in a week from this coming Tuesday, November 3rd. And it won’t be the next day, but I think that following weekend, we’re going to see showings pick up because everybody’s going to realize the world hasn’t ended, life is still decent, and it’ll be okay. And then people are going to want to be in their house before Thanksgiving.

At that point, they won’t, unless you’re buying cash, it’s going to be difficult to get in, unless you’re working with Rich. Now, Rich, you get them done in, what did you say, Jay? Five days, six days? Usually four days, start to finish. Anything less is not acceptable.

Yeah. If you buy the weekend of November 7th, you still got three weeks to Thanksgiving, right? So Rich, you can get that done. Seriously, three weeks is possible.

Now, it has to be a clean file and the borrower, the client has to be on point with getting me the documentation things I need. But three weeks is definitely possible to get a loan closed. If somebody’s self-employed and slow walking their tax returns and other information to me, then it becomes a lot.

Well, then they’re never going to close. Cut the malarkey out. We’re closing them in 10, 12 days.

Cut the malarkey. Let’s go. Anything for you.

I have my buddy, Chad Muth over here, looking at our roof earlier this week, and your mom called me an old curmudgeon. Yeah. Your malarkey, that’s old school stuff.

You are getting older. I am old. You said something earlier that I’d like to go back to, that economic destruction’s been my entire life.

For us millennials, I think that we’re just kind of numb to it because, yeah, we graduated right after 9-11, and then the whole world’s ending in 2008. You get through that, and then the world’s ending again, and the world’s ending with COVID. Now the world’s ending with whatever’s next.

Bring it on. Bring it on. There you go.

Yeah. I mean, life- I don’t know what the tech rec even is. I’m just selling houses.

And that’s all that matters. That’s all that matters. I’m kind of seeing the same thing.

I just looked real quick. Right now, we have close to 70 active listings and another 20-something in contract. For the 60-some-odd active listings, we’ve got five showings scheduled for today, which is crazy.

I mean, it’s been that way all week. I’m telling clients, hey, you could drop your price $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 right now, and it’s probably not going to make a big difference. I mean, unless you just fire sell it.

And who wants to drop, I said, $50,000. I mean, that would be a crazy price drop for somebody, depending on where you’re at. But just sit tight.

Wait until after the election. I think things will pop loose. And we’ll all be eating steak, Jake.

Right? You’ll eat the steak. Very doubtful. I’ll be eating the bugs.

And I’ll owe nothing, and I’ll be happy. Hey, when you come up for the birthday party here later on today, I’ve got some dried out crickets that I’ll give you. I prefer my crickets moist and fresh from the earth.

They’re more crunchy as I eat. Dog meat from China, wherever the hell we’re eating. Listen up, people.

I kid, listen. I’m more interested in who the Ohio State starting quarterback is and where my meat’s coming from right now. Oh, boy.

Yeah. Well, I only eat Brazilian. So, there you go.

Argentinian. That’s what it is. Brazilian horse meat.

That’s what we’re eating. My wife tells me all this stuff. I’m just so tuned out.

I see you keep backing up. What’s going on? Yeah, there he is. He’s stalled.

That’s a good look for him. It’s quiet. It’s quiet.

The last thing he had said was Jaime knows what’s up. I’m happy you didn’t get to finish that and put any context into that. All right, Jay Marinski, wrap her up for us since he’s stalled out.

We will be back next week to follow up on the tech wreck. Hopefully, mortgage interest rates will have fallen further. Yeah, things will keep trudging along here.

So, if you guys need to sell a house, give Dave or Jaysen a call here at Sell for 1%. If you’re looking to buy, give me or Jaysen a call or give Rich a call if you’re looking to make a new purchase at Highlands Mortgage or Refinance. So, if you guys like the information, please like, give us a comment on what you thought, and subscribe.

We will be back next week with another update. Thank you, guys. Thank you.